


I've Got Friends Now

by Sapphy, SapphyWatchesYouSleep (Sapphy)



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: Don't date Hal, Gen, Hal is very old and really rather a romantic, Never get sex advice from McNair, Or Mr Snow, The Talk, Tom is an innocent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/Sapphy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphy/pseuds/SapphyWatchesYouSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal suddenly realises that no one has ever explain the strange and varied world of sex to Tom.</p><p>I intended this to be short and comical but it ended up being a study of Hal's lost loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Got Friends Now

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, I really don't. I rewatched Being Human and suddenly Hal is in my head telling me about the weird things he and Mr Snow used to get up to.

“Hal?” Tom’s voice is nervous and his knock tentative. Hal lets him in because much as he dislikes people in his room, he knows his young friend needs reassurance.

“Hal, what am I going to do? What am I going to say?” He’s twisting a tie between strong fingers, not that it matters, it’s cheap Rayon rather than silk. “I’m no good at talking to girls, you know that! And what if she don’t like me no more, or she’s gone and got someone else or something?”

Hal plucks the tie from Tom’s fingers and sets about tying it, a simple half Windsor knot. He smoothes down Tom’s collar and gives his friend the closest thing to a reassuring glance he’s capable of. It’s probably not very reassuring but they say it’s the thought that counts.

“Believe me Tom, you do not want my advice on women. The last relationship I had with a woman was nearly 500 hundreds years ago and ended spectacularly badly. I got turned into a vampire, killed her and made a tableau from her body parts for her parents to find.”

Tom looks even less calm than he had before. Hardly surprisingly really. Hal really is very bad at being reassuring. He tries again anyway. He probably can’t make things worse.

“Just be yourself Tom, and everything will be fine. And of course she still likes you. What girl wouldn’t? You’re sweet and funny and very handsome.” Because, no he’s not looking for that, for anything like that, but he couldn’t share a house with the guy and not notice. There’s 500 years of instinct making him notice.

Tom laughs, his aquiline nose wrinkling with mirth. “Whatcha wanna go and say that for?” he asks. “You sound like a girl, saying things like that.”

And suddenly it hits Hal that probably no one has ever explained sex to him, not properly. From what he’s heard about McNair the most he ever gave the boy was vague hints and a lot of warnings not to do it with girls you’re not married to. To his surprise, the idea that the job of explaining things might actually fall to him (because Tom is far too sweet and trusting and easily shocked to have that conversation with Alex, ever) doesn’t horrify him. This is, for the first time in years, something he thinks he can actually do, and maybe even do well. Something he can do to help Tom that doesn’t involve anyone dying.

“I don’t sound like a girl, Tom,” he says, nervous fingers still fiddling with Tom’s collar, even though it’s as straight as it’s ever going to be (which isn’t very, it’s third hand from a charity shop and his inner dandy is screaming at him to get the boy in Saville Row as soon as possible). “I sound like a man who… appreciates the charms of other men.”

Tom pulls back, his forehead wrinkling in a way Hal can only, despite his best efforts, describe as adorable.

“Sex, attraction, people, aren’t as simple as McNair probably lead you to believe,” he says, choosing his words with care. “Men don’t only fall in love with women; women don’t only have sex with men. There’s a whole broad spectrum and that’s just one end of it. At the other end there are men and women who only fancy members of their own sex. And then there’s all the bits in between. Well and non-sexual romantic relationships and asexuality and aromantics and transsexualism and a load of stuff you don’t need to worry about. You just need to understand that not everyone falls in love with someone of the opposite gender and settles down to start a family.”

Tom nods and Hal wonders how much he’s really taken in. He discovered this stuff slowly, over hundreds of years. It’s a big thing to dump on someone all at once, especially someone with an upbringing as strict as Toms had clearly been.

“So you’re somewhere in the middle?” Tom asks, and Hal thinks that maybe he’d understood after all.

“Nowadays they call it bisexual,” he says, because he might have a strict schedule but there’s room in it for the internet. “I just call it being old. Believe me, if you were to live to 500 you’d have tried most things as well.”

Tom takes a careful step back, and asks, “And you… fancy me, do ya?” And Hal can’t help but laugh because he never thought he would, didn’t really think it was possible, but he really loves this boy.

“No Tom,” he says, voice as kind and patient as he can make it, they don’t need sarcasm here. “I don’t fancy you. You’re a friend to me, almost a brother. But because I’m…”

“Old,” Tom supplies with a smile.

“Exactly. Because I’m old, I notice things like that. In the same way that I notice that Alex is pretty.”

Tom grins at that and Hal holds up a quick hand to stall him. “Yes, I think she’s pretty. I have to be blind not to. But that does not mean I want to ‘court’ her. I told you, me and women, not historically a good mix.”

“Yeah but your old friend already killed her,” Tom points out, just as he always does.

“Old boyfriend,” Hal says, because he can now, because they’re being honest with each other, and because he thinks that Tom will appreciate his openness.

“Oh.” Tom stands very still for a moment, just long enough that Hal begins to think maybe he said the wrong thing, but then Tom leans forward and gives him a quick fierce hug. “I’m sorry he’s dead then. Even if he was a dick.”

That’s so Tom, sweet and tactless and kind all at once, that he can’t help but grin, wide and real, for the first time in what feels like ages.

“I still think you and Alex would be good together,” Tom tells him, when he catches his breath.

“And I keep telling you, I’m not interested. Me and relationships… not a good mix. My relationships so far…” He held up a hand, ticking them of on his fingers. “When I was still human I was engaged to girl. I didn’t love her, didn’t even know her that well, my father arranged things, but she was sweet. She had a nice smile. I brutally murdered her, for fun. Then there was Fergus, although I’m not sure you can really call that a relationship. I did some really very unpleasant things to him, which he enjoyed far more than I wanted him too. He decided that made us a couple and followed me round like a lovesick puppy for the next ten years, during which time I delighted in upsetting him. Then there was Mr Snow. We were never what you’d call intimate, we just spent a lot of time lying on battlefields discussing poetry. It wasn’t nearly as romantic as that sounds. Then there was a break of about three hundred years and then there was Nick, who was sweet and kind and loved his wife more than anything in the world. So I turned him into a monster, broke his spirit, did some truly horrible things to him and never once told him that I actually really liked him. So you’ll see, I hope, why I think me getting together with Alex is a bad idea. Besides the fact that I don’t actually want a relationship anyway. I’ve got friends, good friends. That’s enough.”

When Tom’s gone, collar and tie as straight as he can get them and as reassured as Hal can make him, he pulls out the box he keeps tucked under his bed.

He’d kept almost nothing, he’s not sentimental and that cycle of good to bad to good again had usually either started or ended with him burning everything he owns. Everything except the contents of this box.

He wears the key on a string around his neck because the thought of other people opening it sickens him to his stomach.

Lying on top, when he opens it up, is a small volume bound in green leather, the spine and cover worn with age and much rereading. It was old, even when it was given to him. A first edition.

On the flyleaf a dedication is written in that curious angular handwiritng that always suggested to Hal that the writer's first language was something more like cuniform than roman scrift.

_To my very dear Hal,_

_Wit with his wantonness_  
Tasteth death's bitterness;  
Hell's executioner  
Hath no ears for to hear  
What vain art can reply.  
I am sick, I must die.  
Lord, have mercy on us! 

_Snow. 1796_

Hal whispers the words to himself as he traces them. He’s always loved Nashe, but Litany in the Time of Plague has a special significance. To him it was always be associated with a slender figure who’s skin is as white as paper, a man so old he’s forgotten his own name. With battlefields and the screams of the dying and the feel of mud and blood soaking into his skin from the torn earth beneath him.

The sets the books aside, stroking it’s cover once more. Mr Snow was a monster and so was Hal, back then, but the affection they’d shared had been real.

Next in the box is a bundle of black cloth. He unfolds it slowly, being as careful as he can. He’s done all he can to protect and care for it, but time hasn’t been kind to the delicate fabric inside. It’s a handkerchief, white cambric yellowed with age, edged in fine lace. In the corner someone, a long ago girls who’s name he would have forgotten if it weren’t for this keepsake, has carefully embroidered initials. RY. Ruth Yorke. She’d been working on a set of them, ready for their marriage. He’d found it in her trousoe when he went looking for something to wrap her body in. He’s not even sure now why he kept it, he barely knew her after all, except that it was a symbol of all he’d left behind, all he could never have again. And a memory of his first kill.

Underneath that is a red velvet bag. He doesn’t open it, just lifts it out and sets it to one side. Inside are little mementos of his kills, beads and earrings and even teeth. Macabre souvenirs collected over a dozen lifetimes.

There are just two things left in the box, a picture and a ring box. The picture shows a hauty woman, her features beautiful, but her expression cruel. The countess Bathory. Not a true portrait, simply the product of some artists imagination. Hal thinks that the expression at least is probably correct though.

She was something of an idol of his, back in the dark days. He’s always been a little too keen on blood, even for a vampire. The others jokes about his borderline OCD behaviour, when they think he can’t hear them, and it’s true. He can’t bear mess or dirt or untidiness. Blood is different though. He could quite happily bathe in it, if only that weren’t such a hassle to arrange. The countess Bathory, he thinks, must have had a lot of very weird servants because draining enough blood to fill a bathtub, filling said bathtub, keeping it warm, that must have taken a lot of man power. All the same, it’s an idea he can never quite shake.

The final item is the ring box. It’s old, but not so old as the other things. It was bought new in 1946 for £3/6. The traditional month’s salary. He knows all about it because Nick had told him, back in the early days when he still had some humanity left. Hal had taken it from the woman’s finger when he killed her, and found the box for it later. He was never comfortable addressing the reason behind his keeping it, always pretended it was just a kill memento like all the others, but that wasn’t true. He didn’t keep it to remember her. 

He kept it to remember Nick.

He sits for a long time, watching the light glint of the diamond. Then, before his resolution can fail him, he unties the chord from around his neck and slips the ring onto it, to hang neck to the key. He puts the volume of Nash on the book shelf along the one Leo and Pearl had bought him over the years, and props the picture of Elizabeth Bathory on his mantelpiece.

The bag he puts back in the box and after a regretful moment, the handkerchief. He’d love to have the delicate thing out on display somewhere, but he’s afraid of it getting damaged. He suddenly misses Annie fiercely. She’d know how to frame it or what to do with it. It’s terribly sexist and old fashioned of him, he knows, but he likes domesticity in a woman very much.  
He locks the box back up and lies back on his bed, surveyed the effect.

The mementoes are small, and the memories associated with them rather sad, but it feels good to see them all laid out around him. The memories are sad, but they’re memories of love all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this, why not check out my fic/rec blog over at gluttonforpunishment.tumblr.com


End file.
